Beauty is in the eye of the head up the ass of the beholder

Possibly the greatest danger in falling in love, or like, with somebody else, is not realizing how we are projecting our own hopes, desires, dreams, etc. into our perceptions of them.

This is most particularly deadly online, when all you know of this other glorious person is what you read online. Their actual behaviour, identity, etc. is beyond you, and they live in your imagination along with the many words they've sent tumbling through cyberspace in your direction, like firing a shotgun from orbit at the moon and hoping you get an accurate shot at somebody standing on the moon's surface.

"yeah, I think I saw a shell that time..."

But we don't talk about it. We don't admit it, we take for granted that what we say, and how we react, is true and meaningful.

I have to stop, and claw myself out of the grips of attraction, and remind myself This person does not dwell in my mind, they are not a product of my imagination, they do not exist to please or entertain me. It is of the utmost danger that I would place them on any higher pedestal than I stand on myself

And then I forget, and the confusion continues in a blare of light and wonder...

This is, respectfully, an answer to a nodeshell challenge from Katyana